Modern communication systems have a large number of capabilities including integration of various communication modalities with different services. For example, instant messaging, voice/video communications, and other forms of communication may be combined with presence and availability information of subscribers. To provide a broad spectrum of services, a variety of communication applications store, manage, and disseminate different types of information. Conventional email applications, for example, stored and managed basic user information such as name, address, email address, phone number, and title. Modern systems integrate calendar information, presence information, alternate contacts, and other types of data for providing enhanced services. Moreover, communication applications such as email applications tend to have differing protocols, data schema, and other differences.
On the user side, a majority of users typically utilize multiple services such as email accounts. For example, a typical user may have a work email (and any other associated services), a personal email, an instant messaging service, and comparable services. Since some or all of those services may use different protocols, data schema, and data storage, combining the information from the different services is a challenging task.